Similar horrors over the years did not inspire Congress to pass new gun laws, even with public opinion polls showing broad support for universal background checks to buy a firearm. Gun control also failed to gain momentum after a June shooting at a GOP congressional baseball practice that critically wounded Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana.

“After every mass shooting, we re-learn the basic fact of gun politics – that the pro-gun forces are more highly motivated and better organized than the anti-gun forces,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.

“If (the Las Vegas shooter) got his hands on a machine gun, Congress might look at improving enforcement of the existing controls.”

As with the massacres in Newtown, Connecticut, San Bernardino and Orlando, Florida, congressional Democrats are responding to Las Vegas by calling for gun control to prevent another mass shooting.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.

“We cannot simply throw up our hands or continue to justify the presence of weapons of war whose primary purpose is to kill the largest number of human beings in the shortest amount of time possible,” Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, said via Facebook.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, was even more forceful, saying it was “time for Congress to get off its ass and do something.”

In an emailed statement, Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Redlands, whose district was the site of the Dec. 2, 2015 terror attack by heavily armed assailants in San Bernardino that killed 14, said: “Too many times, I’ve had to offer my thoughts and prayers to the families of people taken by needless acts of violence and terror, including right here in San Bernardino. Too many times, I’ve stood for moments of silence on the House floor that only led to continued inaction.”

“Congress must take action to implement common sense gun reform because we have an obligation to do everything in our power to keep Americans safe and prevent future tragedies.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, called for a House vote on gun purchasing

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco.

background check legislation, as well as the creation of a new House committee to make recommendations on addressing gun violence.

“Our words of comfort to the families of the victims of the Las Vegas massacre will ring hollow unless we take long overdue action to ensure that no other family is forced to endure such an unimaginable tragedy,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin.

The legislation Pelosi called for a vote on, sponsored by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Santa Rosa, would expand the national background check system to require checks on everyone who buys a firearm, including purchasers at gun shows and over the internet.

A statement from Ryan called the Las Vegas shooting an “evil tragedy” and offered condolences to the city of Las Vegas and victims’ families, but made no mention of gun control.

NRA power

New gun restrictions failed to pass with Democrats controlling the White House and Senate. It’s even less likely with a Republican president and a GOP majority in both houses of Congress.

Many of those Republicans came to office with the backing of the National Rifle Association, which opposes any effort to tighten restrictions on firearm ownership. In 2016, the NRA spent more than $50 million supporting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and GOP candidates in six competitive Senate races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

They all won except for an NRA-backed Senate hopeful in Nevada.

President Donald Trump makes a statement about the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Monday, Oct. 2, 2017 at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

At an NRA convention in April, then-candidate Trump said: “The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end. You have a true friend and champion in the White House.”

As president, Trump in February signed a measure repealing an Obama-era restriction intended to restrict gun sales to the mentally ill. The NRA argued the restriction took away due process rights.

If anything, Congress seems more apt to loosen gun laws. Last month, a House committee, on a party-line vote, signed off on legislation that could make it easier to obtain gun silencers; supporters say silencers cut the risk of hearing damage from loud gunfire while critics contend silencers make it harder to hear gunshots from active shooters. Another bill would allow people with concealed-carry permits to carry their firearms in other states.

After Las Vegas, the gun-silencer and concealed-carry bills are in limbo, according to published reports. However, “There is little chance for new federal legislation to restrict assault weapons or high-capacity magazines,” Marcia Godwin, a professor of public administration at the University of La Verne who has done research on gun control issues.

“The majority of the American public supports some gun control restrictions and there is likely to be more support after this tragic mass shooting,” Godwin added.

“However, a policy window will only open if significant numbers of Republicans in both the House and Senate call for legislation and President Trump signals that he will approve it. This is very improbable in Congress with its partisan polarization and because populations in more Republican, rural states tend to be against gun control.”

State laws

Nevada has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country. The state does not require firearms owners to have licenses or register their weapons and Nevada does not limit the number of firearms an individual can possess.

Semi-automatic assault-style weapons and machine guns are legal in the state as long as they are possessed in adherence to federal law, according to the NRA. Nevada also does not outlaw the transfer or possession of 50-caliber rifles or large-capacity magazines and the Nevada legislature barred cities and counties from passing their own regulations on firearms.

Adam Winkler, a UCLA professor who wrote “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” is doubtful Congress will act. But he said states such as Oregon, Washington and New Jersey have passed stricter gun laws.

The Democrat-controlled California Legislature passed a series of gun control bills after the San Bernardino attack. Gov. Jerry Brown signed six of those bills in the summer of 2016, including legislation outlawing assault rifles with a so-called “bullet button” that makes reloading quicker and requiring ammunition buyers to undergo background checks.

“It’s not that nothing happens,” Winkler said. “It’s just that nothing happens at the federal level.”

Bay Area News Group reporters Patrick May and Casey Tolan contributed to this story.

Jeff Horseman got into journalism because he liked to write and stunk at math. He grew up in Vermont and he honed his interviewing skills as a supermarket cashier by asking Bernie Sanders “Paper or plastic?” After graduating from Syracuse University in 1999, Jeff began his journalistic odyssey at The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York, where he impressed then-U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton so much she called him “John” at the end of an interview. From there, he went to Annapolis, Maryland, where he covered city, county and state government at The Capital newspaper before love and the quest for snowless winters took him in 2007 to Southern California, where he started out covering Temecula for The Press-Enterprise. Today, Jeff writes about Riverside County government and regional politics. Along the way, Jeff has covered wildfires, a tropical storm, 9/11 and the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino. If you have a question or story idea about politics or the inner workings of government, please let Jeff know. He’ll do his best to answer, even if it involves a little math.

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